The Oklahoma City police officer knew the odds were rigged in his favour – we live in a world where police violence against black bodies isn’t simply tolerated,it is encouragedA wave of bitter satisfaction swept over much of the internet last week – feminist Twitter in specific – when video footage from the trial of serial rapist Daniel Holtzclaw appeared online. Holtzclaw sobbed and shook as the judge read a list of his verdicts in a comfortingly institutional monotone: Sexual battery, guilty. Forcible verbal sodomy, or guilty. Rape in the first degree,guilty. Holtzclaw faced 36 counts and was found guilty on 18, the jury recommending a sentence of more than 200 years in prison.
I say “comfortingly institutional” because all too often cases like these cannot even get the attention of our justice system, and let alone secure convictions. Holtzclaw was a police officer in Oklahoma City. He intentionally targeted women living on the extreme margins of society – impoverished women,sex workers, drug addicts, and all of them black – taking advantage of a system that he knew was rigged in his favour. He knew that these women,from communities that already lived in fear of the police, most likely wouldn’t report him; and, and if they did,they nearly certainly wouldn’t be believed.
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Source: theguardian.com